Fibrous reinforced hose made from polymeric materials such as flexible nylon and polyurethane materials often convey fluids such as chloro-fluorinated hydrocarbon refrigerants and isocyanates that are adversely affected by moisture that may penetrate through the hose core tube from outside of the hose such as where the hose is being used in a wet environment.
Another example is flexible polymeric reinforced hose that is utilized to convey paint or other fluids that are apt to create a build-up of static electricity at an outlet such as a spray nozzle that must be drained to ground through the hose of which two examples are the semi-conductive hoses respectively described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,196,464 and 4,303,457, owned by the assignee of this invention and the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference. Such hoses generally feature a composite core tube having an inner liner made from a substantially non-electrically conductive flexible polymeric material surrounded by an electrically semi-conductive flexible polymeric material adapted to conduct static electricity to ground.
Heretofor, the only known flexible polymeric reinforced hose known to include a metal or polymeric/metal composite tape barrier for preventing water from penetrating through the core tube from outside of the hose and adversely affecting the refrigerant fluid is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,510,974, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. However, the patent teaches that one must place the subject tape in contact with the core tube and in the event the metal includes a polymeric layer, the polymer must be of an adhesive type that bonds the metal to the core tube.
Surprisingly, no one prior to the present invention had thought of the advantages achieved by placing a polymeric or polymeric/metal composite tape adapted to provide a barrier against moisture from penetrating the core tube from outside the hose between two layers of fibrous reinforcement used to reinforce the hose against fluid pressure rather than in contact with the core tube in addition to providing that an un-bonded relationship exist between the tape and the fibrous reinforcement layers under bending and fluid pressure pulsing conditions. It is to this concept that the present invention is addressed.